How to Talk to a Widower

that leaves me no way to be at all, which makes me feel claustrophobic and panicked, and I want to throw down a pellet and disappear like a magician under the cover of a thick smoke cloud. I wonder where they get those pellets, and make a mental note to search online when I get home. There are definitely applications for the grief industry.
    “I need to leave,” I tell Claire.
    “So leave. I’m sure Mandy can drive me home.”
    “Certainly,” says Mandy, beaming like a Stepford Wife at her new best friend.
    I flee Starbucks like a vampire caught out at sunrise, running like hell toward the safety of a hidden coffin in a windowless basement. In my case, the local multiplex will have to do.

22

    SITTING IN A DARKENED MOVIE THEATER SMACK in the middle of the workday makes you feel like life is a class that you’re cutting. The sea of empty seats reminds you that all the normal, responsible people are not here but out doing normal, responsible things, which by implication means you are neither responsible nor normal. Usually it’s just you and the odd assortment of senior citizens: helmet-haired ladies in their wrinkled, flesh-tone knee-highs and snub-nosed orthopedic shoes, walking in little stooped clusters of two and three, their enormous handbags crinkling and weighed down with snacks and soda cans bought at the drugstore to avoid squandering their fixed incomes on overpriced theater snacks; the lone, bowlegged men sitting next to their worn overcoats with large tubs of popcorn on their laps, looking decrepit and sad, making you wonder if you look decrepit and sad too. When Hailey was alive I would occasionally sneak off to the movies by myself in the middle of the day, but after she died it became something of an addiction, a weekly craving for the soothing, air-conditioned oblivion of the multiplex.
    Today I choose an action film involving stolen nuclear warheads and the embittered commando, dishonored for questionable crimes, now reinstated and charged with shaving his beard and re-forming his elite unit to track and thwart the terrorists before they blow up Chicago. I’m early, and the theater is almost empty when I walk in, except for one woman sitting in the center toward the back. As I come up the aisle, I see that it’s Brooke Hayes, Russ’s guidance counselor, and she sees me before I can retreat. “Oh my God,” she says, flustered. “Doug.”
    “Hey, Brooke.”
    Sheepish grins all around. Going to the movies alone only works in the insular company of strangers. Knowing someone, however peripherally, exposes you, like running into a friend in your shrink’s waiting room. Now what am I supposed to do, sit with her? Like me, she undoubtedly came to sit alone in the dark and escape. But she might be insulted if I move to the other side of the theater, might think me rude, and then neither of us would enjoy ourselves anyway, knowing the other was sitting there. Our anonymity has been lost, and there’s no graceful way in or out of the situation.
    “This is so embarrassing,” Brooke says, blushing.
    “I know,” I say. “But I think we can handle it.”
    “You found me alone at the movies. You busted me for being pathetic.”
    “If you’re pathetic, what does that make me?” I say. “I do this once a week.”
    “Once a week? Really?”
    “I’m on a first-name basis with the snack girl.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Carmen.”
    “You made that up.”
    “I did. But she looks like a Carmen.” I shuffle my feet. “Shouldn’t you be over at the school right now, tending to our troubled youth?”
    “Today I’m the troubled youth,” she says breezily, throwing her legs over the seat in front of her. Her flared sweatpants ride up, exposing the curves of her smooth, pale calves. Hailey had nice calves too. I’ve always been a leg man. “I hope you won’t rat me out.”
    “Your secret’s safe with me.”
    “Thanks. And you don’t even know my secret.”
    “Are you going to tell me?”
    “That depends. Are you going to sit down? You’re making me nervous, standing there like that.”
    “I thought maybe you wanted to be alone.”
    “I did.” The light flecks of glitter on her eyelids sparkle in the dim lighting as she pats the seat next to her. “Now I don’t.” Then she looks up at me, instantly chagrined. “Unless you wanted to be alone. I mean, that’s why you came, right? I would totally understand.”
    “I did,” I say, moving into her row. “Now I